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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Citra Pale Ale

I’m back!! I stocked up on ingredients for 3
beers on my final day in Gainesville and I’m ready to bust out my propane
system and brew on my new deck. First up was a Citra pale ale with the hops I
got from Sierra Nevada. A little old, for sure, but when you have 7 oz of Citra
begging to be used, you don’t throw them away. I’m envisioning a lighter beer,
with a malt backbone that is only there to let the hops shine. I chose to use a
lot of pilsner malt out of curiosity and to hopefully achieve that.

Citra Pale Ale

6/18/2014

3.5 gallons

5 lb Pilsner

3 lb 2 Row

0.5 lb C20

1 oz Citra (15 min)

1 oz Citra (Flameout)

1 oz Citra (Whirlpool, <120F)

1 oz Citra (Dry hop)

Mash at 154F for 60 mins.

OG: 1.057

FG 1.015

IBU: 31.7

The Yeast Bay Vermont Ale Yeast (1.5 L starter
split in half)

The Brew Day:

So it’s been around a year and a half since I
have mashed in a cooler and boiled outside. I didn’t have tubing to go from my
mash tun to collect wort so I had to hold that. I was also rusty on sparging
and recirculating wort, my boil off rate was way too low and I had two dogs who
wanted nothing more than to drink all the wort I was dripping. Needless to say
I missed almost all of my numbers even after adding a half a gallon of water to
lower my gravity before boiling and the brew day was really stressful.

By the end of it, I could only get the wort to
~80F and half of that was on the floor. I put it in my new temperature
controlled freezer and let it cool down overnight. In the morning I pitched my
yeast, dropped ambient to 62F and left.

Actual OG: 1.068

Actual Volume: ~2.5

6/19/2014: Bumped ambient up to 65F

6/20/2014: Bumped ambient up to 68F

6/23/2014: Checked gravity 1.034. I went to The
Yeast Bay’s site and saw that this yeast needs to ferment higher around the
65-68F range, then finish out even higher around 70-72F. Crap. I sanitized a spoon
and stirred up the yeast while bumping the ambient up to 72F.

6/24/2013: Gravity was 1.034 still. Pitched an extra vial of yeast taken from initial large starter. Ambient set to 68F.